Welcome to episode 140 of the Think UDL Podcast: Professional Development Programming with Saskatchewan Polytechnic’s Heather Touet, Tasha Maddison, and Myra Zubot Mitchell.
All three of my guests today work at Saskatchewan Polytechnic which is located on Treaty 4 and Treaty 6 territory and has campuses in Moose Jaw, Saskatoon, Prince Albert and Regina. Tasha Maddison is an Educational Developer in the ILDC (Instructional and Leadership Development Center). Myra Zubot Mitchell is a Learning Technology Trainer with the Learning Technologies Department and, like Tasha, is in the Learning and Teaching Division. Heather Touet (pronounced “Tway”) is an Instructor with Learning Services in the Student Services Division. In today’s conversation, we discuss the programs that these fabulous multi-disciplinary folks are offering including a UDL Institute which is a yearly event in March, and the intersection of UDL, Artificial Intelligence and accessibility, and a really fun idea they have implemented called UDL mini-challenges. In addition, we discuss how UDL and indigenizing the curriculum are related at their institution among other ideas. Thank you for joining me for this conversation on the Think UDL podcast.
Resources
Saskatchewan Polytechnic UDL Institute
Niagara College Accessibility Hub
Transcript
56:22
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
UDL Institute, Saskatchewan Polytechnic, UDL mini challenges, AI and accessibility, indigenizing curriculum, land acknowledgement, UDL principles, digital literacy, inclusive learning, professional development, educational technology, learning strategies, community building, faculty support, student accommodations.
SPEAKERS
Lillian Nave, Heather Touet, Myra Zbut Mitchell, Tasha Maddison
Lillian Nave 00:02
Lillian, welcome to think UDL, the universal design for learning podcast where we hear from the people who are designing and implementing strategies with learner variability in mind. I’m your host, Lillian Nave, and I’m interested in not just what you’re teaching, learning, guiding and facilitating, but how you design and implement it, and why it even matters. Welcome to Episode 140 of the think UDL podcast, professional development programming with Saskatchewan polytechnics, Heather Touet Tasha, Madison and Myra Zubat Mitchell, all three of my guests today work at Saskatchewan Polytechnic, which is located on treaty four and treaty six territory and has campuses in Moose, jaw, Saskatoon, Prince Albert and Regina. Tasha Madison is an educational developer in the ildc, which stands for instructional and Leadership Development Center. Myra Zubat Mitchell is a Learning Technology Trainer with the Learning Technologies department, and like Tasha, is in the Learning and Teaching division. Heather twe is an instructor with learning services in the Student Services Division. In today’s conversation, we discuss the programs that these fabulous multi disciplinary folks are offering, including a UDL Institute, which is a yearly event in March. So that’s coming up after the release of this podcast, and you can find out more about it in our resources section. We also talk about the intersection of UDL artificial intelligence and accessibility, and a really fun idea that they have implemented, called UDL mini challenges. In addition, we discuss how UDL and indigenizing the curriculum are related at their institution, among other ideas, thank you for joining me for this conversation on the think UDL podcast. Thank you to our sponsor text help a global technology company helping people all over the world to understand and to be understood. It has led the way in creating innovative technology for the workplace and education sectors, including K 12 right through to higher education for the last three decades. Discover their impact at text, dot help forward, slash, learn more. That’s L, E, A, R, N, M, O, R, E. I’d like to welcome my three guests today, and that’s Heather, Tasha and Myra. We’re going to get an intro for for each one of them, and I wanted to thank you so much for spending your time with me today. And I’m just going to jump right into it and ask my first question. It’s going to go to all of you, but I’m going to ask Heather this first, and that is what makes you a different kind of learner.
Heather Touet 03:21
Well, this was fun to think about. I think when I was young in Primary, Secondary School, post secondary, it’s pretty traditional learner. Now, however, when I want to learn new things, I’m just all about failing, like I just want to try and fail and try and fail and learn and try and fail and learn, because I do not have a lot of patience sometimes. So I’d rather I don’t really want to think about it first. I just want, like, no, no, we’re going to do it, we’re going to learn something from doing it, and then we’re going to do it better the second time. So for most things currently in my life, that’s, yeah, that’s how I like to learn now,
Lillian Nave 03:56
nice, very iterative process. Let’s see what works. You’ve got a lot of spaghetti on your wall. Yeah, it sticks, excellent. Okay, Tasha, I’m gonna go to you next, and what makes you a different kind of learner.
Tasha Maddison 04:12
So I initially stumbled on this question a little bit as well. I didn’t really know how to answer it, but it made me reflect on a recent experience that I had as a volunteer for Girl Guides in Canada. So one of our young people in our unit was talking about their experiences with learning accommodations and her own neuro divergence, and I was honestly shocked as she was talking at how many things that she had experienced that happened to me that I just didn’t recognize as such, and I think that’s probably due to the fact that I was a baby of the 70s, so I was very lucky, actually, that I had a mom as a teacher and a grandma who was willing to work with me. Me all the time and just ensure that I was successful. I don’t think that at the time they would recognize, diagnose or accommodate anything that was happening to me, but there was, like several times during my public school experience where I was significantly struggling and very behind, and sometimes even to the extent that I was in like a special group that was aside from all of the other students. And then something just suddenly clicked in both of those years, grade three and grade 10, where I finally got and understood the content and was able to proceed on my own. The other thing I would say about myself is that I used to think that I was a procrastinator. Then, as I was starting to apply for jobs, I started to think of it as being a reflective thinker, you know, making it into a positive but now I see that it is actually how I process information that it takes me a long time to think about the information, think about how I’m going to handle it, whether or not I can apply a creative process to it, before I can actually successfully get down to a project. And then the only other thing that I would say here maybe, is that often My eyes are reading faster than my brain is comprehending the information, so I have to remind myself constantly to slow down.
Lillian Nave 06:25
Got it so? Are you also like when you said you’re either procrastinating or reflecting one of those things, or maybe a couple of those things at the same time? Are you also gathering like you need more information, you need more data to find out what you’re supposed to be doing, or
Tasha Maddison 06:42
definitely, I have a background as a librarian, so I want the evidence before I make up my final decision for sure.
Lillian Nave 06:50
Yes, yeah, I tend to say that’s my excuse. Is, like, I just need more data. Did you start on it? No, no, no, I need more I need more information. Great. Okay, thank you. And And finally, Myra, I would love to know what makes you a different kind of learner.
Myra Zbut Mitchell 07:08
Well, I found this question really intriguing, and I actually woke up this morning with more ideas about that, because I was thinking about it yesterday. And so good question. One of the things is, if I’m learning on my own, you know, what I prefer to do is, is read, and I prefer that more than listening to to the content. Like to an audio book, for example, or watching on video, because what I like to do is scan and get the lay of the land and go back. And also, I get impatient with videos like, Okay, stop. I don’t need to know that. Like, and so if I have a transcript on the side and interactive transcript, I’m I’m a happy camper. But otherwise I prefer reading. And I also, for me, the concepts that tend to stick a really long time for me are ones that are embedded in relationship and story. So I can tell you things from my undergraduate classes. I can tell you stories that were told in my very first class that I took at university on the very first day, because it was a story, and it was in a bit embedded in in the personal experience of that instructor. So then the other, other thing that that I would say is that I often take things very literally, and I, I was sharing with my colleagues yesterday that I think part of this is, is that for both my parents, their first language was German. And so there, although I learned English first, I realized that my cognitive constructs were shaped by them speaking in a way that was relevant to the German language. And so when I started learning German, I was like, Oh, this makes so much sense for me about how it’s structured, because that’s actually how my brain works. But what that means is, whether it’s the German or it’s just how my own brand of neuro diversity is that I take both words and visual cues very literally, and I often have to clarify like this is what I’m understanding. Is that really what is meant here, if headings are used and they’re not used consistently in a document, it confuses me, and I have a hard time parsing how ideas relate to each other. So I used to work as an instructional designer, and I’d edit and review other people’s instructional materials, and it was amazing to me how this thing, which sometimes is a hassle for me, this literal interpretation of words and views visual cues, actually was something I can use in my work. And. Often led to edits and also really great conversations with the people I was working with.
Lillian Nave 10:05
Oh, wow, yeah, what a strength that is. And, okay, your answer has made me think of an entirely other podcast we need to have at some point, which is about language and that construction. And there’s so many things to me as an intercultural person, like when I teach my intercultural class, learning about how other people will perceive of things like especially like German or French Spanish, anything that has gendered articles or gendered nouns, like how a bridge in one language is masculine, and a bridge in another language is feminine, you know? So that brings so many because, just because the word itself is either has a masculine or feminine ending, right? And so that bridge to some would be strong and very manly, and others would be beautiful and elegant, and it might have something to do with that gendered naming or, you know, construction anyway, and so it does. It’s there’s so much that goes along in our perception and understanding that we need clarification, right? So, okay, you just open up another can of worms. We’re gonna have to set that aside and talk some more UDL before we do that. Okay, yeah, so thank you. Okay, so I am so glad you’re all here, because you’ve got so many things that you’re doing at Sask poly, which I like the little shortened version. And so I wanted to talk to you first about the UDL Institute, and that’s where Tasha and I first got to know each other talking about that, because it is a fantastic program. So I wanted to ask about how long you’ve done it, who attends? What does it encompass, and if there’s any success stories that you might be able to share, because I think it’s a great idea that others might be able to pick up on, go ahead. Tasha,
Tasha Maddison 12:07
so my original role when I started working at Saskatchewan Polytechnic was in copyright and open education, and part of that work, we developed an open education week speaker series that ran over the week, obviously over lunchtime, and we usually hosted about three speakers throughout that week. We offered sessions openly, and we also promoted them to educators across the country. So that’s kind of where the idea started to germinate for me, and then when I moved into my current role as an educational developer, I was assigned to UDL. We had become aware of a project that was happening at Humber College. They were kind of the first out of the gate to offer a UDL Institute, and we gravitated to that idea and thought it was fantastic, and looked to offer it at our own institution and offer something similar. So approximately three years ago, we offered our first UDL Speaker Series, and it was part of the national accessibility week here in Canada during the month of June, the first week of June. And that year, we were so pleased to have Dr Tobin, Chad Flynn, and also we featured a couple of our own faculty discussing a local UDL project last year, because we are ambitious, we offered the speaker series along with our first Institute, again during the same week, national accessibility week, our speaker series was only open to internal staff and faculty, but the institute was offered as a day long event with a keynote in the afternoon and concurrent sessions in the morning, we opened it to, you know, anyone in North America. You know any educator. We have had people as far as Romania attend sessions. I don’t know how they heard about us, but that’s, you know, kind of exciting that event. We streamed the in person event live, and then we also offer two sessions solely over zoom. Our speakers last year included Adam Finkelstein from McGill University, who was our keynote. And I often joke that if I attend a session, or you know, I know you, you’re definitely going to be asked to be one of our speakers. So I had heard him speak at EDUCAUSE in 2022 and he talked about designing for variability, and also about the student’s sense of belonging being a predictor of their academic success. And because of his talk at. Magic, cause I thought it would be perfect to have him join us, because we’re building a new building in Saskatoon, a new campus. So it kind of was, you know, the perfect segue into that discussion where we’re looking at building inclusive and diverse learning environments. So perfect timing. Adam, thank you so much for that. We also had Julie Myers from the University of Saskatchewan join us to talk about moving, moving from accommodation to accessibility in digital contexts. And here we go, as luck would have it, I attended the Lillian conference in San Diego the previous January. Attended two fantastic sessions. The second I got home, I contacted both of them and said, Can you please repeat the sessions for us during our UDL Institute? And I’m pleased to say that both of them were thrilled to join us. I apologize in advance if I say anyone’s last name wrong. But Jenny dulick, Alyssa Phillips, Janae Wadley and Michelle Gorenberg from Pacific University in Oregon, gave a presentation on when trying harder isn’t the answer, the impact of neuro normative bias in our systems, and what educators can do about it. And then we also had presenters, Lisa finelli and Carrie l Morin from Goodwin University facilitate a session on UDL and OER. So of course, just fantastic sessions to offer to our audience. And also they were able to advertise some of their own series that they were running and kind of spread the word. So I think that it really is a win win situation when you can get involved in things like that. Last year, we had about 75 people attend. The majority of those were online. It’s very small in person audience. So we learned the first lesson. Offer everything virtually when you’re trying to do stuff like this. It just worked really well. And we had, you know, a fairly huge uptake. We weren’t expecting that many people, so we were just thrilled to have about 75 people. 31 of them were external to Saskatchewan Polytechnic. So we had some local colleges and universities, as well as other ones, including like Red River College Polytechnic, the University of Lethbridge Dalhousie, which is on the total other side of Canada. So that was exciting, and Nova Scotia Community College. So the other thing that we really learned from that was, when there’s so many good sessions to pick from, it makes it difficult for participants to decide what to go to. So this year, you can see it all. You can attend it all. It will be on March 13, and it will be exclusively online. Registration is now open, so we’ll do a little promo for it here. I’m pleased to say that we already have close to 200 participants, which is amazing. It’s a free event and will be again open to educators in higher education across North America. And our speakers this year include Dr Jennifer Pusateri from the University of Kentucky, Darla Benton Kearney from Mohawk College, Dr Shaya Galperin from the University of British Columbia. And of course, we’re thrilled to welcome back Dr Tobin from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and they have a variety of topics to share with you this year, and we’re like, super excited to have them. It is really important to me that this event remain freely available, as I believe it’s important to share knowledge and resources. These sessions have been incredibly inspiring, thought provoking and empowering, and all of the speakers have been a true joy to work with. They seem as excited to work with us as we are to have them. I believe that the UDL Institute helps to build community, and it looks at having fellow educators, nave, navigating, excuse me, accessibility in higher education together, because often I think that you might be one person or a small team within your institution working on this area, and it’s nice to have kind of a network of people that open up To you, who challenge you, inspire you, and then also share your expertise, so that we don’t have to kind of recreate the work in our in our own institution, we can all share together. And then I’ll just, you know, plug our next institution in 2026 I might add that when i. Initially met Lillian, it was because Dr Tobin had suggested her as a potential speaker for the UDL Institute. We got to chatting, she invited us to speak on her podcast. And then we, of course, asked her to headline for us in 2026 so stay tuned.
Lillian Nave 20:19
Yes, stay tuned. I’m so excited about this. And yes, I was so glad to be connected with you. It is such a wonderful community. And I wanted to emphasize that this is a this UDL Institute is free for anyone so from all over the world can join and have fantastic speakers this year. Well, all of the speakers you’ve said you’ve really built an incredible, like powerhouse of UDL brains. I think so with Jen Pusateri and Tom Tobin, they are, because I’ve talked to them, they are as excited to come to this. And I’ve also interviewed Darla Benton Kearney. This is great. So I’m really glad to I wanted to get this, also this podcast out so people could learn about it. We’ll have a link to the UDL Institute on the this episode resources so people can join. And it’s March 13, so perhaps, yeah, so a great opportunity for so many people to to join and learn with over 200 that’s amazing. And
Tasha Maddison 21:26
we’ve only really sent it out to you one list serve. I believe there’s a Canadian collective of UDL, and I believe I’m not positive, but I believe that is the only listserv that we have promoted it on, so it’s gotten really good traction thus far. That’s
Lillian Nave 21:46
great. Oh, thank you. I’m so excited. It’s such a great thing to do, and we really appreciate that you’re opening up to others. We have so much to learn from each other. And I, I love that our whole worldwide UDL community can participate in this. So, but that’s not the only thing you do. See I connected with you over that, and then come to find out, after our first discussion, you’ve got so much more. And so this, to me, is very inspirational. And folks all over the world, I think should know about the things that you all are doing. And so the other thing that, or actually one of many things that you guys are doing, is something that I’m also very interested in, which is UDL and AI and accessibility. And I know Myra and Heather, you have some things to tell us about it from the faculty and student side. And we’ll start with myRA. What are you doing there?
Myra Zbut Mitchell 22:46
Well, first of all, I think I’m going to back up a little bit and give you some context that Heather and Tasha and I belong to a committee called the UDL committee for Saskatchewan Polytechnic, and we’re across four campuses in different parts of our province, and we represent people from in the committee. We represent people that are from the student facing side, as well as the support for faculty and staff that we do. So, you know, we certainly have been thinking about and who isn’t thinking about our artificial intelligence right now, if you’re in higher education, right? And there’s two working groups, you know, there’s our UDL committee, but also there’s a working group for artificial intelligence at Saskatchewan Polytechnic. And while these two groups aren’t officially working together at this time, there’s a lot of informal information sharing that’s going back and forth between us, because we do belong to the same departments, and we share similar concerns. So that is, you know, one of the things that’s happening as as we members of these two groups have questions, we we will talk with each other, but also, would faculty members bring questions to us, which they do? Then we’ll say, Well, we think we should bring in somebody from the other group. So that’s, you know, one of the one of the things that we’re doing, we don’t have any solid answers, because it’s such a time of growth and learning. One of the things that I will say, that that we do, and I in the team that I belong to, which is the learning technology trainers that do a lot of work with faculty, they will come to us and say, How can I do X, you know, and we teach them the How to and we often work with the with Our colleagues in the team that TASH is part of who who work more in the pedagogy side. But when faculty come to us asking about artificial intelligence, one of the things that I do is I encourage them to incorporate more UDL principles in their questions that they ask of AI so to. Actually engage in a conversation with a generative language model and say, Can you know, what else could I do to make this more accessible? Can you have a look at this lesson plan? Are there some give me some ideas for some active learning strategies that I could use here, but that I have, you know, that would consider these particular situations, and then ask for feedback and ideas, not that it’s going to give you something that you can’t you’re going to need to be reflective of that, but to to spur on your own reflective process. So to use it that way. And then the other thing I would like to remind all of us about is that artificial intelligence isn’t just generative AI. And so there’s a lot of tools that have been built to that support accessibility, that use artificial intelligence. So the team that I belong to trains faculty to use the accessibility checkers in Microsoft products, and then also use the accessibility checker in our learning management system, which is bright space. Another thing that we really encourage people at SAS Polytech to use is captioning. So the live captioning with within zoom, which is our video conferencing platform we use within Microsoft Live and PowerPoint live. So those captions that captioning process uses artificial intelligence and also the captioning in videos. So we use a platform called Kaltura, and it will generate machine generated captioning for us. And of course, that uses artificial intelligence as well. And of course, I also need to mention that, you know, we have been offering some PD sessions, and Tasha and one of our librarians recently offered a PD session on accessibility, inclusion and AI and in that they discuss tools that are effective and strategies for implementation, also looking at the ethical considerations that need to be used, that need to be in place when you’re using these tools. Yeah, so that’s some of what we’re up to in that way. But I think Heather has some things about for students. I don’t Yeah, sorry, I just did your job there. Nearly. Can edit that out. You
Lillian Nave 27:21
did great, no problem. And Heather, don’t forget to unmute. You’re good.
Heather Touet 27:28
There we go. Yeah. So I mean, I see students. I definitely see the student side of things, and I’m very lucky that I have fellow colleagues in learning services as well as elsewhere in student services like our accessibility counselors, who are very open to seeing what AI can do for our well for all students, but also including our accommodated students. So what we often see is students will maybe bring AI to us, and they might be using it to just create multiple choice questions to practice for an exam, to summarize content, to do language translation. So it’s great that we get to work with students to kind of encourage, yeah. AI, use in this way, especially generative AI, I know a lot of students, some of our accommodated students, use various software to like, record lectures and then summarize notes, which is also just a really great tool for them. What I like maybe most is that it’s a really great opportunity to just talk about digital literacy with students, which is just super, super key, and something I think we’re going to have to continue to promote. So it’s always kind of a nice in when we talk about, well, what do you know about AI? And like, Oh, do you know how AI can help you? How does it work? And kind of just go from there. But yeah, I’ve definitely seen some really exciting developments and use of artificial intelligence, variety of tools, especially over the last, I would say, two years. Yeah,
Lillian Nave 29:07
you know, I’ve noticed, too, that there’s, there’s so much variability in everything, but about what students know. Because I’ve had faculty that are that think students know everything about AI, they use it all the time. And, yeah, that’s not true. I see you shaking your head. No, definitely not. And so there are some things we can say, Hey, did you know that you can make your life so much easier if you just use this you could, you could kind of change the language of this passage, like, if you’re having trouble with this Shakespeare, you kind of get a, you know, a different version, and understand boy, when I was growing up, we called it the Cliff Notes, what’s the synopsis? And then you can go back and understand what the language, you know, oh, so that’s what that’s referring to, or that’s what that’s, you know, meaning. But then there’s other students I found that I. Are showing me tools like, Oh my gosh. I didn’t know you could do that. That’s I want to use that now. So,
Heather Touet 30:05
yes, yeah, it’s wonderful even, yeah, variety of tools to kind of keep, like, plan out your semester and keep yourself on track, like, time management tools that also use AI is really it’s just, yeah, I feel like I’m learning something new every week, for sure,
Lillian Nave 30:23
absolutely, and I am. I’m amazed at the speed of which everything is changing, yes, as well, right? So by the time people might be listening to this, it’s there’s more, there will be there’ll be more tools and different ones out there. So you also have the many challenges, these UDL mini challenges, and I hear that you even offer prizes. So yeah, I was wondering what they entail. And, yeah, what kind of fun things you’re doing around the UDL many challenges?
Heather Touet 31:03
Yes, I’m going to speak to that too. I’m glad you mentioned fun, because that is kind of what we were going for, is that we want this challenge to be, you know, get people to engage more with UDL, use more UDL strategies, try new things. But also, yeah, have kind of fun while doing it. So it’s kind of in the name. These UDL mini challenges are very small. We want to keep them very manageable. It’s based on the idea of plus one in UDL. But we decided to call it the UDL mini challenge because we’re trying to reduce the jargon that we have as well. So what it basically is, there’s a monthly challenge from January to April this year. And faculty and staff we’re trying to make as inclusive as possible. Can choose to do this challenge. They report back, kind of how it went, fill it a little form, and they get a chance to win a prize. And they also get entered to win a Grand Prize in May that we’re releasing, well, giving out, I should say, at the same time as our UDL Institute. So we’re doing a little cross promotion as well with this.
Lillian Nave 32:11
Yes, what sort of, what is an example of one of your many challenges that you Okay,
Heather Touet 32:18
so each month, because, again, when we built this, we wanted to also use UDL strategies when we were actually doing this activity. So you have choice. Every month, there’s two choices. It’s a theme. January was be flexible. So for example, in January, you could either kind of more faculty related is offer a submission bubble, or something to you know, kind of a little more open up the due dates for assignments, or kind of more staff or management side. You could use a like a Find Time poll, or MS bookings, to give people an opportunity to, like, select when would be best time to book a meeting. So we’re trying to, you know, kind of have an overall theme. But again, give choice, and it’s been Yeah, just kind of fun, nice,
Lillian Nave 33:16
yeah. And what sort of prizes are you? What is enticing people to what
Heather Touet 33:23
we’re doing every month, your chance to win a $25 gift card to either our bookstore or cafeteria. Okay, again, works. It’s all across. We have many, many campuses in Saskatchewan, and then the, I think, the final, the grand prize, but it was $100 gift card. Wow, get you all the copy and or books,
Lillian Nave 33:44
that’s right. Oh, fantastic. I love it. So can I jump in? Absolutely. Please do. Please do
Myra Zbut Mitchell 33:53
my right. So well. And I wanted to say that just when we were talking about this and building it together as the committee, working together, we kept challenging each other about, oh, we need to offer flexibility there as well. Oh, here’s another way. We need to model UDL, so, so the for example, that idea of you get to choose, do you want a gift card for the bookstore or the or the cafeteria that was part of modeling UDL and flexibility, and also we’re providing wraparound support for for this. So we’ve created some websites for for people that have tutorials on them for each of the challenges. So links to existing tutorials, but you know, it’s all brought together. But also, we’re offering UDL coffee breaks at least twice a week, and they’re by zoom, so people can just come in, just bring your coffee and and they’re very informal, and each one has a theme, which, in. Which we ask people like, where are you at with do you need us to show you how to create in our in your online course, that submission bubble? Or do you want to talk about the pedagogy behind that so? So then we proceed from there. We offer those UDL coffee breaks for for each of the challenges. Perfect.
Lillian Nave 35:20
No, that’s great. I like the support model, and also, of course, choice and flexibility, because, yeah, some people are going to want to just eat their winnings, which is me, I’m not. Some people, okay, so, but it’s not all. The next question I have is about, well, actually, Myra started to even answer this question because you’re modeling best practices. So do you how do you model best practices in all of those UDL offerings, especially here it is, in regards to indigenizing the curriculum, and let’s see. Tasha, do you want to start with that one? Absolutely.
Tasha Maddison 36:06
So this is a project that is definitely near and dear to my heart. And yesterday, when we were talking about working together, we were expressing how much we all love working together as part of this kind of subcommittee, the larger UDL committee, and then we also have the opportunity to work with a lot of different colleagues across our institution, and how that work just really inspires us to be joyful at work every day, and it doesn’t feel like work. We’re so engaged and excited about what we are doing that it, yeah, it doesn’t feel like work at all. So while working on a UDL presentation, I began to ponder Indigenous ways of knowing and being, and really wondered how UDL and Indigenous ways of knowing intersected, and how to respectfully recognize both frameworks. So I sought the wise counsel of my good friend and colleague, Carrie McCloy, and she worked with me to create a personalized land acknowledgement for that presentation, and really ignited this lovely collaboration that we’ve had over a number of years, and again, it’s maybe an example of me volunteering people for stuff that they maybe hadn’t thought that they wanted to work on, but it was just such an exciting project, and we enjoyed Working together so much that it really started from that. So the land acknowledgement that we created reads as follows, I am situated on treaty six territory, the ancestral lands of the Cree, Soto Dene, Dakota, Lakota and Dakota people, and the traditional homeland of the Metis. I also acknowledge the contributions of the Dakota and brown prairie Metis people in establishing the City of Saskatoon, where I personally live, work and play. As educators in these territories, it is our collective priority to ensure all learners gain a deeper understanding of our shared histories and contemporary relationships, our work reflects a desire and commitment to create a reconciled future. We respectfully recognize the indigenous peoples of these lands as part of our ongoing commitment to good relations, and the part that personalizes it for Universal Design for Learning reads as follows, although there may be a temptation to include indigenous, Indigenous ways of knowing and being within other frameworks, such as the Universal Design for Learning, it is essential that we are integrating Indigenous ways of knowing by staying true to the principles values and teachings and indigenous knowledge, it is imperative that we consult with indigenous people about our ideas of integrating Indigenous ways of knowing and doing within our classroom spaces and then the royal we we encourage you to reach out to a nearby indigenous community member, fellow indigenous Faculty elders or traditional knowledge keepers to help inform your plans for integration. And I think what’s really important about that statement, and I use it in several of the things that I do, is that it not only grounds the work that we are doing, but it also recognizes that UDL is not about just checking boxes, nor can in integrating Indigenous ways of knowing be performative,
Lillian Nave 39:47
right?
Tasha Maddison 39:51
So Carrie and I spoke about our experiences at last year’s UDL Institute. I didn’t mention it above because I had an. Opportunity to kind of focus on it right here. And we talked about the work that we completed in one of our learners instruction and fundamentals of teaching another acronym that I had to look up to make sure I got it right. It’s our lift modules that we offer in my department. So instruction and let’s see I got it wrong. We’ll start again, instructional and leadership development center. There we go, otherwise known as the ildc. It’s part of a mandatory program that’s offered to all newly hired full time equivalent, employees, faculty, I should say, and they are primarily asynchronous. And the great thing that Carrie and I had the opportunity to do is that in interactive lecturing, which is basically a class about active learning, we introduced an indigenous strategy for each one of the active learning techniques. So to give you an example, we have a section on reflection exercises, and Carrie contributed an indigenous strategy for valuing silence and how to process information to have that kind of deeper understanding of the content and the natural world. So it was just like one of the most beautiful experiences of my life, and I’m definitely the most proud of that project. Going back to something that we have said a couple times, it is really important to me to model best practices for our faculty and to demonstrate how they can incorporate UDL principles into our online materials. Of course, because I was a librarian, is also really important to reference materials. You know, give credit, where credit is due, all of those things. So you have UDL, you have, you know, academic integrity, all of those things. But also to highlight indigenization of the curriculum through reciprocity curiosity and open heart, all of which I think is accomplished by having discussions and building relationships with indigenous leaders. Yeah,
Lillian Nave 42:15
I do think that my colleagues in Canada and in Australia are really leading us in in that, I guess, area or ways of thinking. And I was very happy to see this summer of 2024 when the UDL guidelines were revamped and the major changes came under the engagement section, which is the last section, is now called designs for or Yeah, designing options for emotional capacity and yeah, one of those is empathy and restorative practices, which so to cultivate sorry, it says to cultivate empathy and restorative practices. And that’s not something that was on the UDL guidelines until recently. And also, along with that, is developing awareness of self and others. And that, to me, is what you’re doing when you’re you’re having this conversation and understanding there are multiple ways to to get into the material or to understand it, or to process it, all of those different things. So yeah, I appreciate that you’ve actually given a really clear example there, too, and that it’s not and I’m not saying that, Oh, let’s just boom. Now it fits under the UDL guidelines. I really appreciate that you said, No, this is in collaboration with this is not trying to say, Oh, now this is serving UDL. It is distinctly something else. But at least UDL has opened up and said, Okay, we need to look out and see that there are other ways of doing things that our students are coming in with, and we need to recognize that, and we need to think differently, because all of our students think differently, yeah, yeah. And Myra, did you want to add something
Myra Zbut Mitchell 44:14
i i would i Something that really strikes me about at least in my practice for the intersection of indigenization and and UDL, is that the the teachings that I’ve been fortunate enough to to have been given around indigenization have seemingly, oftentimes circle back around to the quality of humility, approaching, approaching what you do, and with humility and to not consider that you know everything and and I think that that UDL really invites us to do that as well. You know, even some of the conversations we’ve already. Had today about the necessity of listening to our learners and not assuming, even with a question that you asked us at the beginning about are the ways we learn, you know, not assuming that everybody learns the way I do and and even like artificial intelligence can invite us to that practice, because we’re like, there’s no way that we can know, and it’s all, as you said earlier, Lillian, it’s always developing. So to have that, that humility, and to bring that and to cultivate that, is another way to cultivate our indigenous ways of being. And when in UDL, I think, yeah,
Lillian Nave 45:38
and Myra, I’m going to add on to what you said earlier in our conversation. You said that the kind of cognitive structures in your brain, when you were looking at other people’s designs, you were able to organize or think through or and see it differently. And I that was a big like threshold concept for me is thinking, Whoa, whoa, whoa, other people organize things completely differently than I do, right? And so if you, if you ever get a chance to go into somebody else’s course and see their learning management system, whoo, you know, you realize there’s a bunch of different ways right to go about something. And yeah, and then understand that there, yeah, there might be ways we can organize, or different ways that we can help our students understand what’s expected of them. But it wasn’t until then that I was seeing how another professor might teach the same class. It’s like, oh, wow, that’s totally a different way than I would have. And then you know that our students are coming into they’ve got five courses, six courses, and they probably have like five or six different ways to to organize that information. And so as many supports as we can provide to bring down those barriers, to help students know what they need to do, is going to be helpful,
Myra Zbut Mitchell 46:58
absolutely. Yeah,
Lillian Nave 47:02
okay, the last question I have is, like, looking forward, and I wanted to ask Tasha, I’ll start with you, and if I think Heather has anything to add, I’ll take that. I would love it. And that’s all right, what other UDL faculty and professional development offerings are you offering? Or because I’m considering you my new Canadian brain trust, or you hope to offer in the future. What’s on the horizon for saskology? Well,
Tasha Maddison 47:30
100% we are continuing with the UDL Institute. I heard yesterday that it’s going to be part of our regular offerings through my department. So that’s really exciting. But to piggyback on what I was just talking about with the indigenous land acknowledgement, one of the things that we started a couple years ago with our new instructor orientation is that we added almost like a follow up acknowledgement, and that was a diversity statement. And again, it reads as follows, in the spirit of mia wakota, when, which means good relations, we also honor and acknowledge the 2s LGBTQ, I, a p, plus community, differently abled, neuro, divergent and all, traditionally, other people. Through our work at Saskatchewan Polytechnic, we strive to be effective allies who create safe, positive and supporting learning environments for all. I think this was a really important addition. It has been reworked. It’s not all of my own wording. I will attend a presentation and be like, Oh, they said that really good. And, you know, take a little bit of that language and bring it into what I just shared with you here. But I’m really pleased that this statement has gained traction, and others in our institution are starting to use it or write their own to me, this is an example of having a really positive impact. It is very easy to feel overwhelmed in the current political climate, but it is possible to stay true to your values and your beliefs and create waves of positive social action.
Lillian Nave 49:13
Excellent. Thank you, Heather, did you have more to add? I do,
Heather Touet 49:18
and I’m it’s going to seem a little strange, because I’m almost going kind of back to the beginning, but I think it’s important to stress, or just to explain, kind of how we got here, because it was, for me, it was a very unique experience at Sask Polytech. So like we’ve mentioned a few times, we’re all part of this UDL committee at South poly, but we was very much a kind of ground up creation. We actually started in the fall of 2021, as a book club. We were we read the book, reach everyone, teach everyone, and from there, we just, I don’t know, it’s kind of built on relation, our relationships with each other. And we’re like, you know, this is great, but. Like, what if we actually want to do this at, you know, at our school, what if we want to do something about what we’ve learned? And so we did. We gathered a group of like minded people across all the campuses, different departments. We appealed to kind of the higher ups to make us a formal committee, which was successful, and from there, that’s how we’ve been actually able to do these things, like the UDL Institute and these mini challenges. Our first thing that we did was actually create a UDL hub. So based on Niagara College’s accessibility hub, which is worth checking out, it’s wonderful, we decided to, yeah, create just a SharePoint page where faculty, staff management could go to learn more about UDL practices and including them in their daily work life and their courses of course. Other projects we’ve done is with the accessibility counselors. Who’ve done a UDL pilot project where, with various, I think about six different programs at South Polytech actually included UDL practices to try to reduce the need for accommodations so things just extended exam time, recording notes and putting them up. And that was done with these programs and support of, well, both these women here, ildc and LTE and accessibility counselors, tried that out, yeah, just see how it help all students. So we’ve done, yeah, a lot of really wonderful projects, and none of it, we were, I guess, the thing I want to emphasize that we were not told we need to do this, right? We saw this need, and we made it happen, um, creatively in some ways. But now that we’re successful, I don’t think we’re getting shut down anytime soon. And I just Yeah, I feel like I’m so lucky that I get to work with people who I just genuinely like, which is nice, but yeah, it’s kind of just building on those relationships. And yeah, we’re able to create something. I think it’s truly, truly wonderful here at South poly.
Lillian Nave 52:18
Wow, that is fantastic and amazing to think about what comes just from a book club? Yeah, exactly. Wow. That has really spiraled into so many I mean, look at all these programs you’re doing in just four years time. You’ve have an institute, you have many challenges, you have speakers series, you’ve got accessibility, you’ve got a UDL hub, you’ve got connections with AI accessibility and indigenization. Holy moly, this is a lot that’s come from a little old book club.
Heather Touet 52:53
Oh yeah, we’re not, like, Tasha said, we’re not stopping here. We are going to keep going, like, who knows what will be next?
Lillian Nave 53:00
Oh, my goodness, yeah. And it made me think about that. It’s a Margaret Mead quote about Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has, and that’s what you’re doing right now. True. So, perfect. Yeah, wow. Okay, that could be the title of this, the small group that changed the world. I love it. So, so thank you. This has been a lot of your time, and I hope that you can see just in this hour, how much you have done, and how really wonderful it is, how it can be replicated to for all of our listeners and so many great ideas to put that heart knowledge into head knowledge and then out into the world. I just so thank you so much. And anybody who’s listening and wants to learn more about it, I will have links to each of these things, including the UDL Institute coming up March 13 of 2025 and so that people can really benefit too from all the good, hard work you’ve done. So thank you very much.
Tasha Maddison 54:16
Thank you so much. We are so honored to be asked to be to participate in this and to work with you. Over the last hour, it’s been a real pleasure. Thank you so much. Thank
Myra Zbut Mitchell 54:26
you. It’s been a joy. Thank you.
Lillian Nave 54:32
You can follow the think UDL podcast on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to find out when new episodes will be released, and also see transcripts and additional materials at the think udl.org website. Thank you again to our sponsor, text help. Text help is focused on helping all people learn, understand and communicate through the use of digital education and accessibility tools. Text help and its people. Are working towards a world where difference disability and language are no longer barriers to learning and succeeding, with over 50 million users worldwide, the text help suite of products includes read and write, equate SEO and orbit note they work alongside existing platforms such as Microsoft Office and G Suite, and enable them to be integrated quickly into any classroom or workspace with ease. Text help has changed the lives of millions worldwide and strives to impact the literacy and understanding of 1 billion people by 2030 visit text, dot help forward slash, learn more. That’s L E, A R, N, M, O, R, E, to unlock unlimited learner potential. The music on the podcast was performed by the Oddyssey quartet, comprised of Rex Shepard, David Pate, Bill Folwell and Jose Cochez, and I am your host, Lillian Nave, thank you for joining us on The think UDL podcast. You.